Skip to main content

Days 3 to 7: Kayaking!


 
Let me just start by saying that I highly recommend Golden Bay Kayaks. The people were great, the boats were great, and coming around from Golden Bay at the northern end of the Abel Tasman park actually gave us the park mostly to ourselves for the first few days, which was AMAZING! 

 

We discovered in the previous day's safety briefing that the four of us were actually quite lazy. Here I was thinking we were setting out on this hardcore holiday, when in reality the distance that we were going to take 5 days to cover, a family of four was going to do in 3 days. They had 2 teenagers though, so I blame their over zealousness on the lack of booze, because we were stocked! Oh, and a lack of hammock because, clearly, why would you paddle for 6 hours a day when you could paddle for 3 and then lay in the hammock for 3...


There was a lot of hammock time on our trip, and I would just like to use this opportunity to give credit to Brian and Meghan for the best. present. ever. Seriously, we love that thing, so thanks again.

Day 1 of our paddle was by far the most exciting. Because we were coming around from the north, we had to get around Separation Point, which is not for the faint of heart. We got a reasonably early start, but still were in some pretty crazy wind and swell by the time we made the point. There was fear. There was yelling. There were waves breaking over my head. But, we all made it. Mad props to Brendan for digging in any time I yelled that I thought we weren't moving forward anymore and for safely steering us through the waves. And mad props to both of us for successfully surfing our kayak onto the beach. Neither of us had ever landed a kayak in surf that big before. Rumor has it that our friends had a more interesting landing than us, but sadly I missed it while concentrating on not doing what they did. :)

I was a bit nervous that night as the surf was not dying down and I was scared that we would not be able to get out in the morning. Luckily, the weather and tides cooperated beautifully though and we awoke Christmas morning to a calm, blue sky day. Merry Christmas indeed!


To be continued...


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Australia is...

beautiful extreme (google: 'Australia & poisonous'; image search: 'Australia & outback') unique from any place i've ever seen similar to every place i've ever seen simple and laid back difficult and uptight lonely eye-opening ... Closing thought that is completely unrelated: my current career is cool. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6471241.stm
Post a Comment
Read more

i saw a 'roo!

Brendan and his parents came out to visit last weekend, which was fantastic! I love it when I have people to hang out with in this country!! Saturday, I attempted driving for my second time to go to the airport and pick them up. Crazy right-sided driving on the left side of the road. Still incredibly difficult! I must have let my guard down a bit though b/c I got honked at more this time than last. I also got a pretty good piece of a curb (I hope Mark doesn't read this...). It also didn't help that on the way back from the airport, we had 4 people and 8 suitcases in one car. Brendan decided to use his parents as luggage mules, so that we don't have to ship our toys via the boat. I have no idea how I am going to move out of my serviced apartment by myself now based on the amount of stuff in there... Saturday we went to a few house inspections (Fitzroy) and then wandered through QVM and the CBD. We saw Fed Square, the Yarra River, the Docklands... we had beer and coffee spora...
Post a Comment
Read more

Happy Easter - without photos

Photos to be added shortly... Despite having lived in Australasia for a few years now, this year was the first Easter that Brendan and I have had together in this part of the world (due to different holiday schedules, business travel over the holidays, etc.). We opted to take full advantage of our 4-day weekend to check out the far north of the north island. Day 1: We drove from Auckland to Cape Reinga. We had beautiful weather on our drive and, in our usual meandering way, we managed to turn a 6-hour drive into a 10-hour drive! Luckily we left early enough so that we made it to the lighthouse at Cape Reinga for sunset. We saw a lot of sights on day 1, but my favourites were where you can see the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea collide at Cape Reinga and the massive sand dunes from a distance as we wound our way through the green cow paddocks. We stayed that night at the most-northern campsite in New Zealand, a DOC campsite in Tapotupoto Bay. The campsite was fine as we have found ma...
Post a Comment
Read more